Digital Space Art: Alien Worlds (part 3)

In any art you can let your imagination run wild, but certainly space gives you an infinite pallet. Most of what’s out there is very random and often stranger than one can imagine. Although some space art falls in the amateurish category, most of what you find on the web is really quite exceptional. Some goes too far for my taste, and a good deal of it delves into science fiction with alien spacecraft. Until I can build digital models that rival the ships in Avatar, I don’t think I’ll be doing a lot of that sort of thing.

Mixing strange landscapes I’ve found, mostly in Utah, with stars, planets, moons, nebula, and galaxies can create some pretty bizarre composites. I try to imagine they are real and place myself in the night gawking at such spectacles. Alien Butte (above) is one of those shots near Hanksville, Utah that could make you believe you were on an alien planet.

Comet Nebula Alienscape is just one of many concoctions, that yielded yet another out of this world image. The rock formation is from Vedauwoo in Wyoming, a great place to hike and rock climb.

Neptune Moonscape is one of my earlier composites, which resembles a popular image I found in Space Art. It’s always fun to put your own twist on another artist’s interpretation. I always try to go just a little bit further with making it feel real.

Nebula Mountainscape is my latest concoction. This is a shot of Isabel Lake which is probably about 50 miles south and west of Loveland, Co. The water was fairly rough the day I shot this, so the reflection is a blend that includes the night sky. Feathering to the shoreline in the foreground is a little tricky since the detail gets lost in the darkness.